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GoDaddy recently commissioned RedShift to poll 4,000 “very small” businesses (5 employees or less) hoping to understand how they are using the web and found that 59% have no website and that this is impacting their ability to grow and market to new customers.The study also found that 55% are planning to come online within the next 2 years, with nearly half of these businesses believing they’ll see growth as a result. This is in line with what those who have built sites have experienced, adding that 59% of very small businesses with sites say their businesses have grown since coming online. It also found that 48% said they intend to sell goods from their website (e-commerce functionality) within a year of its launch.CEO Blake Irving, who recently participated in an interesting reddit AMA about small business initiatives as well as GoDaddy’s various past controversies, wrote about the new research in a blog post.

“Given that there are roughly 200 million VSBs globally, their getting online effectively could have a major impact on small business growth as a percentage of the economy,” he wrote. “However, there are still some notable distinctions about who is ready to take the plunge. Newer small businesses were nearly twice as likely to want a website compared to their older counterparts; firms with at least one employee (vs. sole-proprietors) were further along in their plans.”